The Top 75 Most Offensive Ads in Modern History

Classic advertising can act as a pop culture history book, but some of the chapters are more than a little shocking.

75. The Projection of a Perfect Life

In the 1950s, home slide shows were all the rage after vacations. Families would invite friends and relatives over for refreshments and some small talk, then dim the lights and pull out the projector to relive the blurry, out-of-focus glory of their trip to the Adirondacks or California coast.

This ad, for the Bell & Howell Headliner Color Slide Projector, features a woman in what can only be described as a torpedo bra. It’s hard to imagine her audience looking at anything but her cone-shaped chest extruding outward – it defies the laws of physics, really.

Sabrina, as the model is called, was at least given the courtesy of facing the same direction as the images she was shining onto a wall, but the star of the ad is her chest. It was 1959 and the bra burning days were still ahead for her.